An opinion survey in Canada indicates public uncertainty about a controversial safe-injection facility in Vancouver, with 39 percent of individuals saying they were undecided about whether to support it, Canwest News Service reported Aug. 20.

In addition, although the facility provides clean needles for users to inject drugs under clinical supervision, one in five respondents to the Angus Reid opinion poll mistakenly said the program hands out heroin, cocaine and morphine to visitors.

The Insite safe-injection facility, which costs $2.5 million a year to operate, has come under harsh recent criticism from Federal Health Minister Tony Clement, who said it saves only one life a year. Clement, who criticized the facility during the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, has called its presence "a surrender to a culture of disease and death" and believes its funding should support addiction treatment efforts instead.

The poll of 1,005 Canadians, taken from. Aug. 15-18, found that 38 percent of residents support the safe-injection facility and 23 percent are opposed. Support was seen as strongest in British Columbia, where the facility is located, and in Alberta.

The facility's sponsoring health authority, Vancouver Coastal Health, says the Insite program refers hundreds of drug users to treatment each year, stating that visitors to the program are more likely than other injection drug users to make the decision to enter treatment.